TED2016 – Dream

My ‘thing’ for this year is doing more activities by myself; not waiting for other’s before I can see a movie, try a restaurant, go to an event. I have gone on solo cinema trips before, but that’s as far as it has gone.

So with that in mind, on Tuesday 16th Feb I went to the Ted Talks 2016 launch viewing at the Curzon in Bloomsbury. It was such a good event; I wish I could have been at the live showing in Vancouver!

10 year old Ishita Katyal opened the event after the introduction from Chris Anderson, Curator of Ted. “Instead of asking a child what they want to be when they’re older, we should ask what they want to be now” Katyal is a well-spoken, confident, intelligent young lady who spoke of her parents, dreams and achievements with such grace and humility it left me awe-inspired!

Next up was Astro Teller who oversees X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory. The moonshot factory is where dreams go to either come true or die a quick death. Teller spoke of how they have some of the greatest minds in the world working hard on trying to break their visions in order to come to a quick conclusion over whether the idea is feasible or not. He told us about a huge project they are working on now to get the 4.5 billion people still not connected to the Internet, online using balloons…yes balloons: Loon Project.

The highlight of the evening for me was the speech by Shonda Rhimes, where she spoke passionately about her love; work. “I work a lot. Too much — much too much. And I love it…” And why wouldn’t you when you work on such shows as Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy? But Rhimes spoke about how she lost her mojo at one point and deciding on a rule of saying yes to everything helped her to get it back. She spoke of playing with her kids and how much she dislikes playing; but for those 15 minutes, and it’s never really more than 15 minutes, she gets to switch off.

What I took from her presentation was that no matter what you choose to say yes to; playing with your kids, meditating, exercising, reading, whatever it is, it is important that you do it. Take 15 minutes out every day to just stop. Stop thinking, stop planning, stop worrying and dream!

To check out the other speakers on the night and during the launch week which is coming to a close tomorrow, see here.

“You don’t come out of the TED theatre back into the mundane world. The world just beyond the doors is super-charged with potential, significance, serendipity. In a way, it’s radically energizing.” Marcus Wohlsen from Wired.com

Even though I wasn’t directly in the TED theatre the atmosphere was electric, and I left feeling inspired; as I always knew I would be!

~ My dream is to work on the organising team of Ted Talks. What is your big dream ? ~